


Like Bitter Ashes

by ActualWritesThings



Category: Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, He gets better, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 07:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11618469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActualWritesThings/pseuds/ActualWritesThings
Summary: Being a clone is dangerous and sometimes people don't come back.Sometimes, being left a shell is better than hurting.





	Like Bitter Ashes

The pilot that greets them for the mission is unfamiliar and he can’t keep the “where’s Toast?” from escaping his lips. A wave of emotions crosses the new pilot’s face, none of them positive.

“You- you haven’t heard?” The silence that greets him is answer enough and Ash does not want him to speak further, wants to cover his ears and pretend the words he knows are coming don’t exist. “Last mission, he- he didn’t make it.”

He feels like the floor has dropped out from beneath him, like the shields in the bay have opened and sucked his stomach out into the the vacuum. Or his heart. He’s aware of the rest of the squad looking at him, like he’s about to shatter. But he’s a commando and one of Vau’s at that. He’s not going to break, he’s not going to rage or scream about how _unfair_ this is no matter what his heart says. So he keeps his face blank and voice calm as he grits out an “understood.”

He’ll grieve after the mission. He will remember, to keep Toast from fading away. But that must come later. Right now there’s a job to do and he’s going to do it.

~*~*~*~

The mission went perfectly, and Ash is suddenly left alone with himself. He’s somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship, having slipped away from the rest of the squad. The logical part of him knows they let him slip away, but he doesn’t care.

Someone’s making a low-pitched noise, all raw pain and desperate grieving. It takes Ash a while to realize that it’s him. He knew this day would come, that to ask the universe to spare a single pilot was foolish, but the knowing doesn’t lessen the pain. It doesn’t keep him from sinking to his knees and sobbing until he can’t, until he’s grabbing hiccuping gasps of too stale air as the enormity of it washes over him.

 _"Ni- Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum.”_ He manages to get the words out, only choking slightly on them. He’s said the words before, for others, but never like this. He never knew grief could be this crushing. “Toast,” he whispers, voice all but gone. _"Riduur,"_ he adds, so quiet that not even he can hear it.

“Please.” He doesn’t know who he’s begging, just that he is. The grief washes over him and he lets it, falling into something that could be called sleep if he wasn’t too scared to dream.

When he wakes up, it’s because Sniff’s there, a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Ash? Vod?” Ash snaps awake and any hope he had of this just being a bad dream immediately shatters. He gets up, pushing past Sniff. He doesn’t want to talk about it. And not with someone who’s never lost like this.

He’s got a pain in his neck and a bigger one in his heart. He pushes them both away. He needs to get back to the squad, back to the missions. If he does his job well enough, it’ll keep maybe a few more of his brothers alive. The missions are all the matter now.

~*~*~*~

He does the next mission perfectly. And the one after that. Again and again until the whispers of ‘wet droid’ grow common enough that even he notices. But he doesn’t care, or at least tells himself that he doesn’t often enough that he can pretend to believe it.

He knows the rest of the squad’s worried, but he’s never been more effective, so they can’t stop him. He won’t let them. They’ve all tried talking with him, getting him to focus on something other than the next mission, but he can’t. Focusing on the mission is easier than focusing on what he’s lost.

It’s not until the next mission is in the Iamahu system that he finds he can’t just focus on the mission. He knows this system and he knows why he knows this system. This is where it happened. Where Toast- his mind shies away from completing the sentence. Even now, somewhere between nine months and a year - ten months, three days, and seventeen hours a treacherous part of his mind supplies- it’s a dull ache deep in his chest that crushes the breath out of him if he tries to think about it.

Still, he refuses to let it compromise him, refuses to be anything other than perfect. Even as he lands on the planet that’s scarred with the debris of the battle that took- that Toast died in. Even as the mission takes him through twisted wreckage of ships that he knew, because Toast liked to talk about ships in the afterglow.

He refuses to be compromised, completing the mission as perfectly as he has all others.

But then-

A signal. One of the beacons pilots have if stranded on planet. So faint he might as well imagined it if it weren’t for the fact that the rest of the squad’s picking it up as well.

It could be a trap. Or. It could be just the beacon. This planet’s all harsh rocks and baking sun, and an atmosphere that’s just on the too thin side of comfortable. But he needs to _know._ But the mission’s over and they’re supposed to return to the ship. Conflicting desires and orders run through him as the beacon repeats, the same standardized message that shouldn’t make him as hopeful as it is.

“Let’s move,” Storm says, taking charge as always, pointing toward where the beacon’s coming, and Ash could kiss him as they set off across the planet double time.

Ash has never felt this blend of emotions before, fear and hope and desperate pleading, yet he barely notices it. He knows he shouldn’t hope, shouldn’t set himself up for more pain, but he can’t help it. The only thing running through his mind is half formed prayers and pleas and promises to whatever gods that might be listening that _please_ let this be him. Let this be Toast.

There’s a rough shelter set in the juncture of several rocks, made of all the scrap that a desperate man can drag behind him. And a blaster sticking out of the doorway, rapidly being lowered as the owner limps out of the shadows.

Ash stops in his tracks, mind too shocked to think. “Toast?”

“Knew you’d come for me,” Toast says, a weak grin on his face. He’s too thin and there’s a wicked looking scar running down his face and into the tattered collar of his shirt. His right leg ends just below the knee, a hobbled together mass of rough metal in its place. But he’s there. He’s real, he’s alive and Ash has his arms around him before he’s even aware of moving, somehow ripping his helmet off so he can properly press their foreheads together. 

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:  
>  _Vod_ : sibling, comrade, companion  
>  _Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum_ : Mando remembrance of the dead  
> "I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal."  
>  _riduur_ : spouse, partner.
> 
> Want to here more about these clones? Go [here](http://notactuallyherenotreally.tumblr.com/tagged/sass-squad)


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